Saturday, June 9, 2012

Harvest time

Harvest time around here actually began a couple weeks ago when the first few snap peas were ready to eat. But then on May 30th (or 31st) I ate our first raspberry. I'm sure that must be a record for Minnesota!
We have a big plantation of this Korean Gold, which I think is the best tasting raspberry of any variety.

This is going to be an amazing year for raspberries. These are our red and black ones out front:

We've also had our first few strawberries!

Actually, a stupid squirrel got the first one. Grr! After that I made good on my plans and put up tulle (a kind of fabric) all the way around the bed. Something got in and made off with another berry or two and this time I think it was a rabbit. An adorable little bunny (and I mean little!) has been hopping about our yard looking adorable and scared and wreaking havoc on everything. It chowed down on one of our tomato plants. Grr. Anyway, I stapled the netting even more and we've been able to keep our strawberries to ourselves. They are tasty!

Also sometime in the last week or two I got an email about some extra apple trees. I jumped on that opportunity! We went over and picked up a 5-foot tall bare-root Honeycrisp. I went to work digging a hole in the back yard for it, trying to find enough composted material and good dirt to put back in the pit of sand I had dug out (ack! I hope the thing grows!). But after only a week or so the tree has leafed out and has flowers!

It is also cherry harvesting time. I'm not sure how much we've picked at this point; maybe 10 pounds? My brother picked a large bowl on Monday or Tuesday this last week and Jeremy just finished picking another large bowl. At the risk of tempting fate, the birds have STILL not discovered our two cherry trees. We are lucky. And for those who remember (uh...that is if I actually even blogged about it!) the little sucker we saved last year is doing very well. It's already about 4 or 5 feet tall now and even set a handful of cherries this year. I have high hopes of it taking over for the last part of the old tree when it dies.

1 comment:

I would love to have cherry and apple trees some day. Jealous:) We plan to do geo-thermal some day (natural gas has been so cheap we've delayed are plans) So we have to wait to plant and permanent plants. I just started harvesting our raspberries this week too. Our June bearing strawberries are almost done, but our ever bearing seem to be at their peak for harvesting.

Your Homesteader

This is the blog formerly known as “Northwest Meets Midwest,” where I shared about the absurdities and adventures of living in the Midwest (having moved here from the Northwest). But really, this blog has been more and more a story of how we’ve fallen into urban farming and homesteading. So read on and enjoy our adventures in canning, preserving, mushroom-growing, local/organic fanaticism, chicken raising, designing and constructing, sewing, and attempting a little self-sufficiency in our corner of Minneapolis.